Arts based research methods can be very effective at supporting lesser-heard groups to express nuances of their experiences and how they have made meaning from them. Here are three examples of my work as an artist-researcher on interdisciplinary research projects.
Read more…

As Donna Haraway writes, we have got ourselves and the natural world into ‘lots of trouble’, and here are three of my responses to the mess we are in. Tidal Village was a temporary site specific installation on the Severn Estuary; the site specific drawings are from The Stinging Nettle Atlas, which explores themes of girlhood, place and freedom; and in Multispecies Drawings I am using natural processes as a creative agent.
Read more…

Narrative or deep mapping is a participatory process that tries to understand a place or situation through different people’s relationships with it. Iain Biggs describes deep mapping as an ‘essaying of place’, in which each person’s voice ‘retains its own distinct inflection within the harmonies and dissonances of the song as a whole’. The two examples here are The Atlas of Human Kindness, which is an ongoing participatory project, and The Stinging Nettle Atlas, which is a monograph about my childhood in East Kent.
Read more…

A fairly recent piece of work is a series called an alphabet of unremarkable onjects. We can easily overlook the things that we use every day, and so in these paintings I have placed them centre stage.
Read more…

The natural world is not equally accessible to us all, and in my outdoor sessions I aim to provide safe spaces in which people can work alongside each other doing real jobs and learning real skills. I have chosen three examples of outdoor work, Companion Planting, Speedwell Nursery School, and Nature Discovery, all of which were based on a Bristol City Council allotment.
Read more…